September 19, 2005

Woman bids $ 25'000 to name King character "CELL"

Stephen King's new horror story focuses on a set of rampaging zombies controlled by mobile phones, reports 7News Stories.

"King fans around the world spent much of last week on eBay, outbidding each other in an online auction organised by authors selling the rights to name characters in their new novels.

On September 1, eBay Giving Works, the site's dedicated program for charity listings, went live with the electronic auction. The auction already has fetched well over the nonprofit's fundraising goal of $US50,000 ($A66,000).

The benefit was the brainchild of Gaiman, who approached Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon with the idea when he heard the group was running out of money.

The auction's second phase, which will allow bidders to vie for the chance to name a character in books by John Grisham, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman and others continues through Sept. 26.

As the online auction's first round closed on Sunday night, Pam Alexander of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, won the right to name a character in King's novel, CELL, with a $US25,100 ($A33,000) bid."